Google Apps to get new sign-in page ‘early next year’ without customizations and full email addresses required

Google today announced that its new sign-in page will be rolled out for all Google Apps customers “early next year.” The updated design is meant to be consistent across all the Google Apps services, including Gmail, Google Calendar, and Google Drive.

Here is what organizations with Google Apps need to know:

The Google Apps sign-in page can no longer be personalized with colors and custom logos. It will now look the same across all Google sign-in pages.

Users will have to log in with their full email address (example: joe@company.com).

For single sign-on (SSO) domains with a network mask, users will be presented with the new Google sign-in page when they log in from outside the SSO network mask. This change does not affect SSO domains without a network mask.

Google hopes the change will improve security by getting users accustomed to the same login process across all its services. This is probably true, though some enterprise companies probably won’t be too happy that their branding is being removed from the pages, a decision that may end up confusing many.

The company also believes the redesign should make it easier for users to switch between accounts. Given what we’ve seen so far, this doesn’t surprise us.

The new sign-in page saves all your log-in history. This means you can simply enter the password to access a specific account, meaning logging in and out has become more straightforward.

Google says it will provide more details “in the next few months” so Google Apps administrators can communicate the upcoming change to their end users. As such, there is still no date to mark on your calendars, but we’ll let you know when there is.